Gertrude More belongs to a tradition of mystical writers who believed in the value of the via negativa, a path to union with God by way of total self-abnegation and the emptying of the mind of set ideas and images. Her only book-length work, THE SPIRITVAL EXERCISES (Paris, 1658), is a collection of her writing assembled by Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, and published some thirty-three years after her death. Some of More’s other verse and prose appears in the biography that Baker composed, but her SPIRITVAL EXERCISES remains the main text she has bequeathed to her order and to posterity. It is reprinted here in full with Arthur F. Marotti's introductory note outlining Gertrude More's life and work.

A Benedictine Reader shares the treasures of the Benedictine traditionthrough the collaboration of a dozen scholars. It provides a broad and deep sense of the reality of Benedictine monasticism using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and originally written in six different languages. The introduction to each of the chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. This second volume of A Benedictine Reader looks at Benedictine monks and nuns from many angles, as founders, reformers, missionaries, teachers, spiritual writers and guides, playwrights, scholars, and archivists. In four centuries, they went from Bavaria to North America and Africa, from England and Spain to Australia, adapting to new environments. Committed to the liturgy by their profession, they played an important role in the liturgical renewal that culminated at Vatican II. Rooted in God, church, and their surroundings, they showed remarkable resilience in the face of wars, confiscations, suppression, and exile. Their impact has been deep and stabilizing, and their story is a microcosm of the history of the church in modern times.